Matt Trueman | Theatre Critic and Journalist

Chiller Chekhov: The Young Vic’s Cherry Orchard

This piece was shortlisted for the Observer Anthony Burgess Prize 2014. The Cherry Orchard is a play about change. It plays best in moments of extreme uncertainty. The more imminent upheaval feels, the more urgent and radical that needs be, the more Chekhov’s play yields fruit. In 2014, it’s found its moment – and in Simon Stephens and Katie Mitchell, adaptor and director respectively,...

Theatre’s Space Man: Ivo Van Hove

Published in The Stage, 30.01.2015 Ivo Van Hove scouts the Jerwood Space for the right spot. It’s the end of the working day and the café is almost empty. Every identical white table in the glass conservatory is free. Van Hove leans back slightly and assesses the situation, before making his choice and sitting himself down at the nearest table. I’ve been warned this might happen. He has a...

Review: The Merchant of Venice, Almeida

Published in the Financial Times, 26.12.2014 The Merchant of Vegas: it has a certain ring to it. Like Shakespeare’s Venice, then the epicentre of global trade, Las Vegas is defined by money. Rupert Goold’s setting of the play in the US city makes immediate sense: the moment Ian McDiarmid’s Shylock offers Scott Handy’s Antonio a loan with a pound of flesh as indemnity, you see that...

The Light Princess: Paule Constable

Published in The Stage, 4.12.2014 “Nobody knows how to talk about lighting design.” Paule Constable sure knows how to put a tech-illiterate critic at ease. She also knows how to talk about lighting design. Beautifully. Rivetingly. Accessibly. “What’s important to me is storytelling,” she breezes on. “It’s just that ultimately my response to the world is with light.” Even if you...

Review: God Bless the Child, Royal Court

Here’s a critic’s tip for you: the less confidence a creative team has in a script, the more detail you’ll see crammed into a set design. It’s the first thing they teach you at Design School: the crafty art of distraction. Chloe Lamford’s primary school classroom is meticulous. There are nature notes stapled to walls, crepe paper collages and a creased solar system. The stationary...

Review: JOHN, National Theatre

Here’s a funny thing about theatre. Audiences have all the control. Whatever artists might choose to make, audiences choose what to see. You can’t force an person into a particular show. You have to attract them. It’s about persuasion, enticement, seduction. Or, to give it is usual (fucking) name: marketing. What do audiences – and I absolutely don’t mean critics – chose to go and...

Review: Are You With Us?, SPILL Festival

Were I ever to run away and join a circus, I would, without the slightest scrap of doubt, join Gob Squad. No other company in the world makes making theatre look quite as much fun as they do. A lot of the time, it looks like they’re in it primarily for the lulz; as if, back in 1994, one of them said, ‘Let’s be artists. That looks like a giggle,’ and the rest went, ‘Yeah, alright. Why...

Lloyd Newsom’s DV8 Dances Out the Devil Within

Published in the Financial Times, 17.10.2014 “All art should be controversial. The problem with dance is that too much of it is happy to avoid controversy.” Lloyd Newson is no stranger to controversy, so it’s hardly surprising that within minutes of our sitting down, Exhibit B should crop up in conversation. The Barbican had just cancelled Brett Bailey’s “human zoo” exhibition after...